SOURCE: Banchoff, Thomas. Introduction to Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, pp. xv-xxxi. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991.

In the following introduction to the 1991 edition of Flatland, Banchoff provides an overview of the novel and discusses its relevance for a contemporary reading audience.

Flatland first appeared over one hundred years ago and a dozen different editions have been published since then. Why now put out a new edition of this book in the Princeton Science Library? For each generation of readers, Edwin Abbott Abbott's classic story of encounter between beings from different dimensions has had different significance. In 1884, the social satire on the limited perspective of Victorian England was as important as the comments on the use of analogy in treating higher dimensions, and both of these elements were clarified by the introduction to the second edition, purportedly written by an editor but actually written by Abbott...